For me, a good piece of music is one in which people from all of these different groups maybe don’t understand everything but can at least get something out of it. It is very important to me that my music speaks to all of these people on a certain level.

(1) No one, who is going to a party, ever fails to brush his hair;
(2) No one looks fascinating, if he is untidy; (3) Opium-eaters have no self-command; (4) Every one, who has brushed his hair, looks fascinating; (5) No one wears white kid gloves, unless he is going to a party; (6) A man is always untidy, if he has no self-command.

The world is so out of gear, out of nature, out of itself, nothing need make sense or make itself understood, unless it is an imperative in an individual’s life. Some find such pressure unavoidable, unbearable, crippling, and pursue endeavours which, even if they may think they are sane, in fact go down the rabbit holes of chance and and find themselves in a Wonderland of nonsense which was none of their doing in reality but became a logical step toward a refuge they imagined was there.

“In the scene containing the Mad Hatter’s riddle, I play with musical riddles all the way from the Baroque to Schoenberg…Another example — in the Queen of Hearts’s entrance scene, the music [parodies] the entrance of Turandot…”Unsuk Chin

“Do you know Campbell Soup Co. has not sent me a single can of soup? And I’ve bought every flavour. If you ever run across Mock Turtle, save it for me. It used to be my favourite, but I must have been the only one buying it, because they discontinued it. Soups are like paintings don’t you think? Imagine some smart collector buying up Mock Turtle when it was available and cheap and now selling it for hundreds of dollars a can”ANDY WARHOL

“There is no clear-cut psychological narrative or moral in the book, but precisely this is what makes it so exciting. Carroll [predates] ideas and inventions of countless writers and philosophers such as Kafka, Wittgenstein or Beckett. Alice in Wonderland has been referred to by neuropsychologists, mathematicians, as well as by quantum physicists, and also the popular culture and film have embraced it.”UNSUK CHIN

“Alice-in-Wonderland syndrome also known as Todd’s syndrome or lilliputian hallucinations, is a disorienting neurological condition that affects humanperception. Sufferers may experience micropsia, macropsia, or size distortion of other sensory modalities. A temporary condition, it is often associated with migraines, brain tumors, and the use of psychoactive drugs. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome is experienced after ingestion of muscimol. The famous hallucinogenic that Alice from Alice in Wonderland eats (“red and white toadstool”) is Amanita muscaria or Fly Agaric, which contains the psychoactive alkaloid muscimol. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome is sometimes called Todd’s syndrome, in reference to an influential description of the condition by John Todd (1914-1987) in 1955, a Britishpsychiatrist who worked in Yorkshire. Todd discovered that several patients under his care experienced severe migraine headaches causing them to see and perceive objects as greatly out of proportion. Since Lewis Carroll was a well-known migraine sufferer with similar symptoms, John Todd speculated that Carroll had used his own migraine experiences as a source of inspiration for his famous 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll’s diary reveals that in 1856 he consulted William Bowman, an eminent ophthalmologist about the visual manifestations of migraine he regularly experienced. Since Lewis Carroll suffered from these symptoms of migraine years before writing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it is reasonable to presume that Carroll used his experiences as inspiration.”

touch the head of the mallet with his hand, or slide the mallet along his foot or leg to guide it; touch the head of the mallet with his hand;

rest the shaft of the mallet or a hand or arm on the ground or an outside agency;

rest the shaft of the mallet or a hand or arm directly connected with the stroke against any part of his legs or feet;

move the striker’s ball other than by striking it with the mallet audibly and distinctly;

causes or attempts to cause the mallet to strike the striker’s ball by kicking, hitting, dropping or throwing the mallet;

strike the striker’s ball with any part of the mallet other than an end face of the head, either:

deliberately; or

accidentally in a stroke which requires special care because of the proximity of a hoop or the peg or another ball;

subject to Law 28(d), maintain contact between the mallet and the striker’s ball for an appreciable period when the striker’s ball is not in contact with any other ball or after the striker’s ball has hit another ball;allow the mallet to be in contact with the striker’s ball after the striker’s ball has hit another ball; subject to Law 28(d), strike the striker’s ball more than once in the same stroke or allow the striker’s ball to retouch the malletstrike the striker’s ball so as to cause it to touch a hoop upright or, unless the striker’s ball is pegged out in the stroke, the peg when in contact with the mallet;

in a croquet stroke, or continuation stroke when the striker’s ball is touching another ball, allow the mallet to contact the striker’s ball visibly more than once; or

in any other stroke, allow the mallet to contact the striker’s ball more than once; or

in any stroke, allow the mallet to remain in contact with the striker’s ball for an observable period;

strike the striker’s ball when it lies in contact with a hoop upright or, unless the striker’s ball is pegged out in the stroke, the peg other than in a direction away therefrom;

move or shake a ball at rest by hitting a hoop or the peg with the mallet or with any part of his body or clothes;

touch any ball, other than the striker’s ball, with the mallet;

touch any ball with any part of his body or clothes;

in a croquet stroke, play away from or fail to move or shake the croqueted ball;

damage the court with the mallet, to the extent that a subsequent stroke played over the damaged area could be significantly affected, in a stroke in which either:

his swing is restricted by a hoop, or the peg, or a ball not in contact with the striker’s ball; or

he is attempting to make the striker’s ball jump; or

the striker’s ball is part of a group.The penalty for all of these is that the turn ends, it is the opponent’s option as to whether the balls are replaced or remain where they lie. In the event of a croqueted ball leaving the lawn and a fault being claimed, the adversary may waive the fault and the balls remain where they end up and the turn finishes.http://www.oxfordcroquet.com

“when we are dreaming and, as often happens, have a dim consciousness of the fact and try to wake, do we not say and do things which in waking life would be insane? May we not then sometimes define insanity as an inability to distinguish which is the waking and which the sleeping life? We often dream without the least suspicion of unreality. ‘Sleep hath it’s own world’ and it is often as lifelike as the other.”
LEWIS CARROLL, 1896

“My music is a reflection of my dreams.
I try to render into music the visions of immense light and of
an incredible magnificence of colours that I see in all my dreams,
a play of light and colours floating through the room and at the same time
forming a fluid sound sculpture. Its beauty is very abstract and remote,
but it is for these very qualities that it addresses the emotions
and can communicate joy and warmth.”
Unsuk Chin, 2003

The Rorschach technique: a psychological test in which subjects’ perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analysed using psychological interpretation or complex algorhythms. Rorschach’s use of inkblots may have been inspired by German doctor Justinus Kerner who, in 1857, published a popular book of poems, each of which was inspired by an accidental inkblot. French psychologist Alfred Binet had also experimented with inkblots as a test of creativity and, after the turn of the century, psychological experiments where inkblots were utilized multiplied, with aims such as studying imagination and consciousness.

What Is Mathematics? is a mathematics book written by Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins, published in England by Oxford University Press. First published in 1941, it discusses number theory, geometry, topology and calculus. The composer György Ligeti named What Is Mathematics as one of his favourite books.

A Note by Unsuk Chin:Alice AcrosticLewis Carroll wrote this poem as a conclusion for his two Alice stories. It is an acrostic in which, reading down, the first letters of each line spell out the name Alice Pleasance Liddell, the girl who inspired the Alice stories. In this poem Carroll recalls, nine years after the event, the boating trip on the River Thames on 4 July 1862, during which he made up and first told some of the Alice adventures to the three Liddell sisters. In the last line of this acrostic, ‘Life, what is it but a dream?’, Carroll was probably making reference to the anonymous canon that even then was popular in England:Row, row, row your boatGently down the streamMerrily, merrily, merrily, merrilyLife is but a dream.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer, noted for his facility at word play, logic and fantasy.